Sensei in a music magazine talks a bit about Bleach. No complete translations yet from what I've gathered, he mentions the 10 year plan for Bleach, says that in the past 10 years he's learned not to care what people think of his manga anymore and that he's trying to speed up his manga now versus trying to stretch it (!!!) but that it still drags in parts.

Here's he is with the author of Five, Shiori Furukawa--she drew a pic of Hitsugaya for him and he drew a Five character for her (Koujiro I'm told--I don't know Five)

Furukawa-san is really cute. She's the one who requested Rukia in Jump's swimsuit spread last year but Kubo picked Orihime because it suited the mangaka Kawashita's style. Here the bday pic she drew for Sensei last year:

Oh man, sensei looks terrible in that first picture :_( (and his hair looks like mine, not good >_<) he needs to eat properly.

About his comments, kudos for him in both regards, I'm glad he keeps doing what he wants, wether if i like it or not, I prefer this honesty from him. It makes the story more real for me. And the speed vs stretch, oooh yeah! I beg for a good speed, I hope he can manage that without rushing things, I hope he can get the adequate rythm to it.

Thanks for that debbie, always nice to have an up to date interview and hear more about his views on his work. He's the artist doing all the work so as long as he's happy with what he's doing then kudo's to him. I hope a full translation of the article is posted somewhere later on.

I thought it was funny Sensei chose to draw Kojirou, 'cause Kojirou is the closest thing to a shinigami; he's the one who is a kendo genius XD I knew for the longest time that Sensei and Furukawa-Sensei talked to each other through twitter (they must like to talk about food XD), but I wasn't sure if he was effectively reading Five - which is awesome XD

Five has a very odd art, but the characters are lovely - it's part of my ultimate shoujo favourites XD

Furukawa-sensei took a pic of herself near an human-sized Ichigo statue in Japan expo, a huge French con for anime and manga in which she participated XD

On other news, sensei looks really, really bad. He should take care of himself more. >__>

As other have said, Kubo doesn't look to be...well, I'll let you insert your own adjectives. Then again, from what I've heard of the life of a mangaka, I'm not totally shocked. All that art, every week...I wouldn't be able to do it.

I don't care how long he drags, as long as he's comfortable with it. Yes, the entire Arrancar super-arc took a long time, but as a whole it's a good arc (just reading it chapter by chapter, every week was the problem...). And I can't remember where, but I'm sure this isn't the first time Kubo has commented on his own pacing; if he feels he's going slow, and is able to speed it up and still like the story, then good for him.

I'm sure the poor man's exhausted, but to his credit, it really looks like those photos were just taken in a typical indoor office/conference room setting, with normal florescent overhead lights and no other setup to improve the lighting conditions - no one looks very good in photos taken like that!

i think we should make him feel that we support his work, he sounds very...tired there :T i dont know if its a good idea but why not make BLEACH trend in twitter for a while? you know, he seems to spend a lot of time there.like when the ichirukis fans made ichigo&rukia trend on twitter.i dont know, juts throwing ideas XD

Love for Sensei never hurts. <3 I'm not huge on trying to trend on Twitter--it seems so complicated (just participated in a #Gintama trend attempt that failed for various logistical reasons) but genuine honest appreciation is never a bad thing. People like to bitch. The man works hard. He's going to "story improvement" meetings. He's well aware of the crazies in fandom. He's pretty much lost his innocence through Twitter. I'm sure his fanmail has gotten weirder. He had a serious illness this winter and then Toyko gets hit with crisis and rolling blackouts. I worry about him all the time.